As mobile phone devices equipped with a digital camera have been widely used recently, there are more opportunities to use image data. For example, image data is acquired by use of such a mobile phone device and displayed on a display device, or thus obtained image data is printed out by a printer. As such, the image data has been widely used in various ways.
Further, a notification service of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) with the use of a two-dimensional code, such as QR code (registered trademark), and the like services have been offered. More specifically, image data of a QR code is read by a camera function of the mobile phone device, and then the image data is analyzed whereby information of a URL or the like that is embedded into the QR code can be obtained. Moreover, there has been also studied and developed such a technique that data, such as URL, is embedded into an image so that information can be obtained from image data of the image.
Moreover, there have been widely used techniques of transferring image data via wireless communication between apparatuses. For example, as a protocol for transferring image data via wireless communication, a high-speed infrared communication protocol (i.e., IrSimple (registered trademark)), a short distance wireless communication protocol (i.e., Bluetooth (registered trademark)), and the like techniques are used. Furthermore, short distance data communication using infrared radiation, such as IrDA, is also used. With the use of these communication protocols, it is possible to easily transmit, to a display device, image data obtained by a mobile phone device or image data including information of a URL or the like.
Further, along with the wide use of mobile phone devices, there have been increased such opportunities that for using a content of video data, image data, or the like, the content is received from a server that administrates the content. The server performs an authentication process with respect to a user of a mobile phone device at the time of distributing a content so that the content can be distributed only to the mobile phone device of the user who is permitted to use the content. Then, the server distributes the content only to the mobile phone device of the user who is authenticated.
In the meantime, the authentication process requires transmission of personal information of the user and the like information that the user does not want to disclose to other people, from the mobile phone device to the server. However, there is such a risk that the personal information and the like information may be eavesdropped at the time of transmission from the mobile phone device to the server. One of effective ways to prevent such a risk is encryption of information to be transmitted.
As a technique related to encryption of information and decryption of encrypted information, Patent Literature 1 (Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2002-366442 (Publication Date: Dec. 20, 2002)) discloses a data terminal device. More specifically, Patent Literature 1 discloses a data terminal device that obtains, from a data recording device, encrypted content data and a license including a license key for decrypting the encrypted content data, so that the data terminal device decrypts the encrypted content data and reproduces the content data thus decrypted.
The data terminal device is arranged such that the data terminal device transmits, to the data recording device, a function certificate that ensures a reproduction function of a content, and then receives encrypted content data and a license from the data recording device when the function ensured by the function certificate conforms to reproduction control information included in the license. The arrangement allows the data recording device that manages a license key to check a reproduction limit of the data terminal device upon content data.
However, the above conventional arrangement causes the following problem. That is, in a case where a reproducing apparatus receives content request information from a portable communication apparatus and requests, in response to that, an administrative server that administrates a content, to provide the content to the reproducing apparatus, the administrative server cannot check whether or not the reproducing apparatus is an authentic destination to which the content is to be transmitted.
For example, in a case where a content of image data received from a certain WEB site or the like is displayed on a portable communication apparatus, visibility of an image displayed on a display screen of the portable communication apparatus may be poor because the display screen is small. In this case, such a system may be possible that the image data of the WEB site is transmitted to a reproducing apparatus having a display screen larger than that of the portable communication apparatus so that the image data is displayed on the display screen of the reproducing apparatus.
In the meantime, as described above, a content to be distributed from a certain WEB site is provided only to an apparatus belonging to a user that is permitted to use the content. At this time, data necessary for an authentication process is exchanged between an administrative server of the WEB site and the apparatus that requests the content. However, a reproducing apparatus, such as a television, cannot exchange such data necessary for the authentication process with the administrative server. As a result, the reproducing apparatus cannot receive the content directly from the administrative server.